From slaughterhouse to garden sanctuary

The Macon County Master Gardener Association is hosting an open house from 1 until 4 p.m. June 15 at the county’s Environmental Resource Center.

The organization is developing the grounds at the center, the site of an old slaughterhouse, as a horticultural demonstration garden and wants the public to see it.

The garden features native and landscape plants from Western North Carolina. Visitors can tour a variety of features at the site, including perennial beds, a butterfly garden, a rock garden, a woody ornamental garden, a meditation garden, a heritage flower garden, an herb garden and an orchard with trees and small fruits.

Several of the gardens are still in the process of being developed. There are also three types of irrigation systems at the site, a composting demonstration area and a greenhouse built by the master gardeners, a program administered through the county’s Cooperative Extension Office.

Volunteers also help maintain the site on Tuesday and Friday mornings.

The center is located at 1448 Lakeside Drive, just east of the county’s landfill.

This Must Be the Place

Standing in line at the Old Europe coffee shop in downtown Asheville, I said that to my old friend, Jerica. It was a rainy Sunday evening and we’d just gotten out of a documentary screening (about Tim Leary and Ram Dass) at the Grail Moviehouse. While I was mulling over the cosmic nature and theme of the film and what our place is in the universe (as per usual), I looked over at Jerica and smiled.

Reading Room

Of course, we’re intended to read from cover to cover many books — novels, histories, biographies, and more. It would make little sense to begin Mark Helprin’s novel A Soldier of the Great War on page 340 of its 860 pages. We might open and commence reading Paul Hendrickson’s Hemingway’s Boat, on page 241, but we’d miss some of the…